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The Most Important Social Media Metrics and Why You Should Care

I'll be the first to admit that social media is great for a lot of things. It's great for growing your brand recognition, creating conversation and engaging with your audience. Then again, there are also a lot of things social media isn't great at.

I hear the same comment from different business owners and managers, "I need to get my business on [insert popular social platform]." Most of whom don't know why they need to be on it in the first place.

Obviously I realize that being active on social media is a requirement these days, but I'm always interested in — to what end? What is your end goal?

If your goal is to increase brand recognition and have your business become a viral success, then yes, social media is a great avenue for that. But if your goal is to make sales or collect leads, the way you use social media should be a little different.

Sure, a ton of Likes are great at making you feel warm and fuzzy inside but are they really helping you accomplish your business goals? Maybe you need to be tracking something else...

In this article I'll explain what the most important social media metrics are, and why you should care.

Let's get it.

What social media metrics do I need to track?

For those looking to make sales or generate leads using social media there are only a few metrics that really matter: click through rate, bounce rate, and social media shares.

Post during the times your audience is most likely to see your content.

Why do I need to track bounce rate?

Bounce rate is the percentage of people that leave your website after only viewing one page. In a literal sense your audience is seeing your content, clicking it, and arriving on your landing page.

If they leave your bounce rate increases, if they stick around and look at something else on your website your bounce rate decreases.

Why is this important you ask?

It's an important metric to monitor because you can compare it to your other sources of traffic in terms of the ROI it's bringing your business.

If your bounce rate is lower than say, SEO traffic, that tells you that the traffic you're bringing to the site is more qualified and more interested in what you're selling. Your visitors are clicking on your post, arriving on your landing page, and sticking around to see what your business is all about.

You can take a look at your traffic sources via the "Acquisition" > "Channels" tab in your Google Analytics.

To improve your bounce rate:

Test and improve the messaging of your posts to speak more to the people in your target audience.

Experiment with different types of content to find out what resonates most with your target audience.

Improve the messaging and user experience of your landing pages to compel your target audience to explore more of your website.

Though a high bounce rate isn't always a negative — you may of matched their intent or answered their query — it is a solid indicator of whether or not they're the right audience for your business.

Why social shares?

Facebook, along with it's little brother Instagram, have announced changes to their Newsfeed algorithms to favour updates from your friends and families over business pages.

The declining reach of business pages on these platforms has been a hot issue for a while now.

From what we know, the best way to have your content shown organically to more of your audience is to increase the amount of content that's shared.

The act of sharing a piece of content is an indicator of how valuable it is to a Facebook user. It tells Facebook that, that piece of content was so valuable that you wanted to share it with your friends and family.

The same goes for Twitter. If a like is a hit, then retweets are home runs. A retweet is considered content amplification — more eyes on your content.